Around 45 attendees, from 19 companies across 8 countries, some companies were Microsoft partners who brought their BizTalk consultants other were customers and/or possible customers, 5 Microsoft Integration MVP’s present and 1 member of Microsoft BizTalk Product group and 3 Sponsors (DevScope, Codit and Microsoft Portugal) these are some of the numbers that reflect the success of this event that was held in Casa do Infante –Oporto, Portugal last 14th March 2013!
Is not very common in Portugal have an event dedicated exclusively to BizTalk Server and in my experience and personal opinion, It’s a great feeling when we manage to successfully execute something like this after months of work, gather these fantastic people who paid their own expenses to be at this event and for the first time bring one Program Manager in the BizTalk Product Team to Portugal! And at the end received great feedback and, most importantly, some attendees asked me if I plan to repeat the event next year! Well, it is still too early to answer that question.
📝 One-Minute Brief
A detailed recap of the Oporto BizTalk Innovation Day held on March 14, 2013. Despite weather delays affecting key speakers, the event was a massive success, bringing together 45 attendees from 19 companies and 8 countries. Highlights included Akshat Sharma’s (Microsoft) keynote on the future of BizTalk Server 2013 and expert sessions by international MVPs at the historic Casa do Infante.
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The event was held in Casa do Infante, located in the heart of Porto’s UNESCO Heritage Site, and what a beautiful combination between a building with 7 centuries of history, full of culture, and new technologies. I would like to thank Porto Convention Bureau for kindly giving us the venue for the event; we couldn’t have picked a better place.
I would also like to thank my company, DevScope, for helping me organize this event since day one and for being one of the sponsors, especially my two coworkers, Marcia Teixeira and Sónia Gomes, who were simply wonderful and tireless in preparing all the details of this event. And also of course to Codit and Microsoft Portugal for having sponsored this event, without all of them, none of this would have been possible.
The day began at 9:00 am with the opening of the registration process, and the guests didn’t take too long to start arriving and start socializing with other attendees and speakers. With the registration process progressing very smoothly, two of my biggest problems were confirmed: due to bad weather in Europe, both Akshat Sharma and Tord Glad Nordahl were delayed, so I had to reschedule almost all the sessions.
At 9:50 am, I kick-started the event with his introduction speech, welcoming all the guests, presenting all the speakers and all the information about the event, like a coffee break, lunch, dinner, and so on.
Steef-Jan Wiggers presenting BizTalk Server 2013: Cloud-based adapters
With Akshat delayed, Steef-Jan Wiggers was the first one to climb the stage to present his session about cloud-based adapters in BizTalk Server 2013 with some deep technical demos. This session was an introduction to the new adapters available with BizTalk Server 2013, in particular, those targeted for integration with the Cloud, and how each can be applied in various use cases.
Saravana Kumar presenting Monitoring and Management of BizTalk environments using BizTalk360
The second session of the day, and also because Tord’s delay was due to Saravana Kumar, who took the stage to present his session about BizTalk360. This session introduces you to the new “standard” for monitoring and management of BizTalk Server platforms, and it was the first time in a public event that Saravana presented the sixth version of the product.
Sandro Pereira presenting BizTalk Mapping Patterns and Best Practices
What was supposed to be the last session of the day turned out to be the last in the morning. At 11:45 am, I took the stage to present my session about BizTalk Mapping Patterns and Best Practices. The goal of this session was to present some common mapper problems and common solutions, and present some of the best practices to have in maps with some technical demos.
Akshat Sharma presenting Keynote: BizTalk Server 2013 and Future Vision
Finally, between 11:30 am and 1:30 pm, all speakers arrived, and Akshat Sharma, Program Manager in the BizTalk Product Team, who did a great session, was able to take the stage in the first session in the afternoon to present the Keynote about BizTalk Server 2013 and future vision. This presentation provided an overview to the audience of what the Microsoft Integration Strategy is, both on-premises and in the Cloud and an introduction to the future BizTalk Server release in which he explained some of the core features that will be added to BizTalk Server 2013 and what to expect in the new Windows Azure BizTalk Services as well BizTalk IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).
Nino Crudele presenting BizTalk assessment and architecture review, strategies, methods, and troubleshooting
Nino Crudele had a session on Assessment and Architecture Review, Strategies, Methods, and Troubleshooting, and after some minutes in the stage, the audience was already laughing about crazy problems that he found over the years. I personally love this session with lots of tips on real scenarios and problems found through years of experience, as well as tools and techniques to create and maintain good documentation and make a good assessment.
His whitepaper on these subjects can be downloaded here.
Tord Glad Nordahl presenting Proactivity in BizTalk
The last session before the Q&A had as a protagonist Tord Glad Nordahl, who captured the audience with his mastery and excellent advice for BizTalk administrators. This presentation addressed some of the most important aspects to be aware of in order for the enterprise to maintain a stable BizTalk environment.
All together now: Discussion and response to voted topics (unconference style)
I tried to do something different than usual in this type of session to join even more the BizTalk community together, and I invited some people from the audience, on the same day, to join the panel Q&A.
Therefore, Ricardo Torres (Premier Field Engineer at Microsoft Portugal) and Sam Vanhoutte (Microsoft Integration Architect at Codit) have joined Saravana, Steef-Jan, and Akshat in the Q&A Panel, and the result was approximately 30 minutes of good talk with several questions.
Short Breaks, Lunch, Evening drinks, and Dinner
In addition to all technical sessions for us, it’s also important to provide a good opportunity for people to network and interact. Therefore, based on the similarity of the past events, we carefully planned short breaks, lunch, some drinks after the event, and dinner, which gave the opportunity to all attendees to speak and interact with the Microsoft product group, speakers, and fellow attendees.
The speakers
The fourth event, after Milan, Stavanger, and London, had a special guest over from the Microsoft Product Group, Akshat Sharma, who did a session (keynote), and here’s the usual group photo!
All the presentation slides are available for you to download it here: http://obid.devscope.net/presentations
After the event
After the event had ended, the BizTalkCrew enjoyed themselves a little, visiting and getting to know the City of Oporto, and I had the pleasure this time to be the tourist guide.
Our next event will be in Italy in June 2013. See you there!
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